


nudge

by neveroffanon



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: EMA Breathalyzer, F/M, I may have been listening to THAT song from 2.04 while writing this, Loosely based on the 2.13 promo, This is not the healthiest relationship, savage!Rio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-09 22:31:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18926275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveroffanon/pseuds/neveroffanon
Summary: Beth aims a gun at Rio.





	nudge

“You know this isn’t how this is supposed to go, you and me,” His voice rolled over her.  Cold, a little strained.  “You supposed to pick up the gun and shoot him, not wave it at me like you some kinda fool.  Are you a fool, Elizabeth?”

She shook her head at him, tasting blood on her tongue.  The copper tang of it was jarring, gut wrenchingly disgusting.  Her hand jittered, and she clasped the other around the base of the gun.  Eyes watering, mascara trudging streaks down to her jaw, she grit her teeth against the scream that wanted to bubble up and over.  Her heart hammered, thudding against her ribs, and she dragged in a breath.  And another, and another until she thought she’d be able to open her mouth and talk without her voice wavering.

“Then what you doin right now sweetheart?”

“Keeping my sanity,” Beth bit out the words, like they didn’t tear at her.  Like she wasn’t being stabbed with every breath she took.  

He twitched an eyebrow at her, the only sign he was affected.  When he smiled a moment later, all the way into his eyes, her heart skipped a beat.  

“So we back here again.  Is that it?”

“Yeah, we are.”  She swallowed against the lump in her throat, hauled in a shuddering breath around it.  

“And why is that, Elizabeth?” He asked the question like he was asking her the weather.  Like he was telling her Kenny needed a tutor, or Dean was a dumbass.  

“I think you know.”  Beth eyed him, a tremor starting anew in her hands as she bore the weight of the gun.

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“I contacted the police and told them everything.  About Canada, the warehouse, the pills, the pen cap.  About Mary Pat and the bag in the yard.  The cash.  All of it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“About the cars and the dealership.  Costco and Walmart.  All of it,” she said the words, feeling as though she were screaming at the wind.  The wind didn’t give a piddling little shit about her problems.  Neither did Rio.  

“Yeah. I know.”

“What do you mean, you know?”  She tilted her head up at him, tried not to look at the body propped up on the floor beside him.  Tried not to think about why he’d called her here, to a house down the street from her own.  

“You think I don’t got nobody in that office?  Me?”  He laughed.  “I got them running, darlin.  They go where I tells ‘em.  Just like you.”

“I don’t... I don’t know what that means.”

“Aww come on ma.  You can’t get all slow on me now.”

“Tell me what that means!”

“It means,” he stepped closer, all mirth falling away, like it had never been, until she could feel the heat of him, smell the cologne he used, hear his breathing.  “That I pull the strings and the puppets dance.”

“Now pull the trigger so we can go.”

“Go where?”

“To work,” he smiled a little, like he had in the car.

She stared at him, and her hands trembled, lowered the gun, remembering the first time she’d done this.  The first time she’d laid her finger over this same trigger.  She couldn’t do it then; she couldn’t do it now.

Rio _hmmed_ low in his throat and stepped around her.  “Remember this ma?  I showed you before.  Arms out,” he slid his fingers, blazing heat from her shoulders to her wrists, raising her arms until the gun pointed, unwavering, unerring at Boomer’s head.  “Back straight, feet apart,” he pressed her back against him and nosed a leg between hers.  “Chin up,” he threaded a hand into her hair and tugged.  And then he was gone.  The heat, the fire of him behind her, was banked, and it was just her and Boomer.  He was unconscious now, but he’d wake up if she pulled the trigger.  Wouldn’t he?  

“What happens if I kill him?”

“You get a get outta jail free card, sweetheart.  You told your story, but there ain’t gonna be proof.  Nothing to show if you tellin the truth or if you lyin.  And Turner can’t do nothing without proof.  Not to me.  Not to your crew.”

“What happens if I don’t?”  He stepped close again, and Beth tried to ignore her stomach twisting, the heat that flooded her.  

“What makes you think you can leave unless you do?”  Beth blinked away the sudden burn of tears in her eyes.  “I can’t do this.  Please.  I can’t.  I couldn’t kill you.  I can’t kill him.  Just let me go or kill me.  Because I can’t do what you want me to do.”

“Then I’ll help you.  I’m supposed to be teachin you, isn’t that right?”  Beth looked over her shoulder at him, but all she could see were his eyes, wide and empty.  

“Turn around,” he nudged her with a shoulder.  “Safety off,” he murmured in her ear, wrapping his hand around hers, “breathe in, and, pull.”  

Beth choked as his finger crushed hers beneath his, the kickback a roar in her ears.  The casing leapt over her head and fell, _clinking_  to the ground.  Boomer jerked, once, and slumped into the floor.  Blood leaked in a trail, a river down his face and Beth felt her stomach rise, rebelling.  She curled in on herself, gasped in a breath and held it.  

Rio pushed down their arms and tugged the gun from her hand.  “Good girl,” he murmured into her ear.  His hand twined in her hair again, tugging until she leaned back into him.  His lips at her ear, his voice rumbled low, “Now let’s go make some money.”

Beth tore herself away, tried to ignore her body wanting to linger, and turned away from Boomer to face him.  “There’s a man dead on the floor, and you’re talking about money.  About money?”  She could hear herself.  Her voice was a wail, or a screech.  It was a wonder Rio didn’t plug his ears with the volume of it.  

“Yeah.  We gotta make money, sweetheart.  To pay all them legal fees your crew got comin up.  Even you got something don’t you?  A divorce, right?”  He grinned, a little thing, a curl of his lips and it was gone.  She wanted to slap him for it anyway.  

“A man is dead!  We killed him—.” 

“You was always gonna kill him.  You tried to get quick with it, is all.  So now that you did what you was supposed to... get your ass home, outta my face, and wait for me to call you.”

Beth ground down on the questions she wanted to ask, on the nausea, on the image of Boomer’s face lying bloody and bullet-ridden behind her.  “Aren’t you worried about the FBI?”

“Nah.”

She looked at him.  Then, like she’d done with Dean, with her mother, with the kids, she pushed everything away.  Everything that couldn’t help her get through the moment, she locked it away. Everything that was going to break her, if she thought on it too long, she pushed away.  

“Fine,” she said, after a long moment, knowing her face was as empty as she could make it.  “Then I’m going home to my family.”

She paced around him, leaving a body’s worth of space between them.  She didn’t shake.  She didn’t even look at him.  She didn’t look back at Boomer.  She was close to the door, when his voice floated back to her.  

“Don’t block my number this time.”

* * *

“You wash your face yet mama?”  Rio’s voice came through the phone and it took an act of will for Beth not to throw the phone down the toilet.  She looked into the mirror, where she had finally swiped away all the mess that’d covered her face all the short walk home.  The kids had stared at her in horror, as she’d come into the kitchen.  Dean had gaped at her, his lips forming her name.  And she’d fallen into his arms and sobbed.  

Her phone buzzed.  Another message coming through.  Beth picked it up and clicked the play button.  “No time like the present to call up Turner and Noah and all them.”

She blinked down at the phone as though it was the safe deposit box where Rio kept all his plans.  After a minute of clutching the phone so tight it creaked in her grasp, she fired back a message.  “Why would I call the FBI?  What am I supposed to be telling them?  That I committed a murder last night?”  She scoffed, sent the message and set the phone down with a clack.  

“Yes.”

“What?”  She pressed send, fingers gripping tight enough that it should’ve hurt, the phone should’ve bent, and waited.  

“Yeah, I’m gonna need you to confess.  And take a deal.  No prison time and in exchange... well I’m sure you can think of something.  Do what you do mama.”

Beth dialed the number, cursing when she realized she’d turned the WiFi off, flicked it back on and dialed him again.  It rang and it felt like an eternity.  

“You want me to spy on you?”  Beth hissed the words.  

“You already got a good start the other day.  You know where I live, what I drive, where I drink.  So you do what you do, and lie til I tell you to stop.  Make ‘em think you mean it.  Make ‘em believe you never did any of it because you wanted to.  But cause you had to.”  

Beth clenched her hands together again around the phone.  It was clear enough what he meant.  He meant the kids and the money and the inviting him to her bedroom.  The love-making.  She hesitated and then opened her mouth.  “You never forced me.  Dean did.”

It was a gamble, but she threw the dice anyway. She knew, she’d known from the moment he’d smashed up Dean’s corvette, after that first time at the bar, that what was between them was more than work.  She could recognize jealousy from a mile away.  Rio was jealous, was hurt.  He was playing the role of creepy ex after a breakup to a tee.  The fact that she was in his gang, working for him—a thought she tried not to admit to or dwell on for longer than necessary— just made it all worse.  

“That dumbass couldn’t make you do nothin you didn’t already want.  Don’t even try to play like you was afraid,” he paused.  “I know you Elizabeth.”  His voice gave the words no weight.

“And what makes you think I haven’t changed?”  Beth knew she wasn’t the same woman who’d been giddy enough to nearly float through the rest of the day, the first time he’d said those words.  A lifetime had passed since then.  

“Darlin the one thing about you is that you ain’t never gonna change.  You all up in this life, cause you want it.  Don’t matter how much you say you want out.”

“But I can’t do what you’re asking me—.”

“I ain’t askin.  You the one who called me for help.  I’m helpin.  Boomer out the way, isn’t he.  Your rotten egg, she gone.  Now all that’s left is getting you out the game,” he paused.  “So you call up Turner and snitch.”

Beth kept silent.  “If I confess to killing Boomer, they can put me in jail.”  She felt sick as soon as the words crossed her lips.  How selfish could she be?  She’d just murdered a man not three hours ago and she was already thinking about covering her ass.  

“They don’t want you in jail sweetheart.  Turner and them want me there.  Or dead.  You gonna help keep me out.”

“For how long?” 

“Til it’s finished mami."

**Author's Note:**

> There’s all sorts of fun theories about the Season 2 finale bouncing around on tumblr right now, so here’s my contribution, which is (REALLY loosely) based on the promo. My belief is that Agent Turner has a higher up who’s in Rio’s pocket and has used the phrase funny money and Monopoly money to Turner, after hearing it from Rio. Thus the bit about Rio having someone in the local FBI office. Questions/concrit are always welcome :)


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